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Indigenous Affairs

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Michael Long, the Victorian footballer continues restarts..umm….well at least he walked the last few kilometres into Canberra on his mission to save his Indigenous brothers from themselves..from the government. I note he was smart enough to walk out of Victoria but as I said before there are better things he could do for his people. Mark Latham makes a brilliantly meaningless statement saying
“Long had done a great service, I think, to put Indigenous issues back on the agenda.”
Typicall Dead Parrot statement. Maybe Mark missed the fact that a mob of drunks at Palm Island preempted Michaels task during the course of his walk/drive to Canberra. They have definitely put Indigenous affairs back on the agenda. Michael puts other matters on the agenda when he quotes the poem Me, We. No that’s not the title – it’s the whole bloody poem. I’m glad I don’t have an Arts degree or sometime in my life I may well have had to discuss Me,We. Out west near Goondiwindi some local farmers got ticked off with local youths stealing from them and over re-acted by slipping a rope around one of the thieves neck and dragging him around for a while. The boy, understandably shaken, will hopefully redirect his life to avoid such treatment. The trouble is, the lad has dark skin which has everybody screaming RACISM. If I caught someone trying to steal my property then race wouldn’t be an issue. It would occur to me though, to train the miscreant to associate pain with theft. At Palm Island, police are still the bad guys, according to the MSM. The drunken mob that tried to kill them by setting fire to the police station, Court House etc are using the ‘Poor Fellow Me’ defence which strange as it may be, never works for us white fellows. In 2000, in Darwin, I had a conversation with an ex National Serviceman who since Army days had worked as a builder. For some of his life he was contracted to erect houses for Aborigines in missions in the Territory. I showed interest hoping for an answer to the many problems, but it was not to be. Once someone had died in the house no one would live in it. The NT Government then tried to relocate the house to another mission. They still woudn’t live in it. They then tried to break the houses up using walls from one with floors etc from another. They still woudn’t live in it knowing that a tribesman had died in a building associated with ‘that wall’ I’m not sure if this still is the case and no way do I knock them for their beliefs, other than to say education will fix it, but it does indicate how far we have to go. Maybe that should be ‘how far Family and Community Services Minister Kay Patterson has to go as she discusses ways of addressing the Indigenous housing crisis. People in the communities have said they want to repair and maintain their own houses and that is admirable. I just hope it works.
Uncategorized

Kiwis promise not to attack anyone

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Our cousins over the ditch in New Zealand long ago abrogated all responsibilities regarding defence as they swung Left in the 1980s. I have a lot of friends among their numbers but I no longer feel sorry for them. They have been voting in weirdos for some time now so they have only themselves to blame. PM Helen Clarke has been at the ASEAN meeting and has signed a non-aggression pact with the members. Whoopee. NZ is a threat to whom? As friend and fellow Brisbane blogger aptly points out in today’s Australian this is not really a big deal.
Surely, there can be nothing more illustrative of impotent posturing than the decision of the New Zealand Prime Minister to sign a non-aggression pact with ASEAN members? It’s a bit like a budgie signing a non-aggression pact with a cat.
‘Budgie’ Clark. I like it.
Politics

Fallujah troubles

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There has been debate for some time now about the US Marine who killed a wounded, unarmed terrorist during the battle for Fallujah. Murder most foul or self defence? Predictably the Left call it murder and the right, justifiable homicide or words to that effect. At this stage, until we hear the words and thoughts of the Marine, no one is in a position to call it either way. No one other than the Marine knows the answer. Kevin Sites doesn’t – he just recorded an event. Commentators around the world can’t know either as there are too many factors involved. Kevin Sites appeals to all to understand his point of view and why he submitted the film for release. His story rings true and doesn’t indicate any bias. I’m happy to accept that Kevin believes what he says In Vietnam, when dealing with severely wounded or dead we would loop a rope around an arm, pull back out of grenade range and then turn the body over. You see, the enemy being fanatics, were known to remove the pin from a grenade as their last defiant act and secure the grenade with the lever under their body or a limb. When turned over the grenade would explode. If they are prepared to do this as their last conscience thought do you think they won’t do the same when they have more control over their body. They will, believe me. Romantics and novelists quote flags of truce and Geneva Conventions. The soldier sticks to reality and until he is totally in control Rule 5.56 applies. Wounded isn’t enough. The Marine would be looking in the terrorists eyes for a hint of resignation or defiance. He would be looking for tiny body movements that might herald danger..a pistol coming up…a grenade being thrown or rolled. His limbic brain would be in control. It would be assessing the risk and preparing to fight or flee. It has already filed the fact that these terrorists, lying on the ground wounded, have previously killed Marines and it would not be prepared to give the terrorist the benefit of the doubt. The Marine did what all soldiers have always done….assessed the situation and acted. This is not the time to cut any slack. Mistakes translate into death and hesitation itself can be a fatal mistake. Kevin Sites doesn’t know all of this and if he thinks he does he’s wrong. Its a feeling not a sentence in a rule book. He is in Iraq filming action and has no responsibility to react in a split second to try and save lives except his own. He just records the events with a lens that in no way is wired through the brain and vision of the Marine. Not for him the hundreds of hours Marines train to react very quickly to threats. Not for him the responsibility of the life of the man following him. He records history. It is the role of the soldier to play his part in making that history and it is no less important because that role is a small one. The Marine didn’t go into that room prepared to fire He went in prepared not to fire if he was very quickly convinced it was safe. He has already applied first pressure to the trigger and as it is his and his mates lives at risk, and not the cameraman?s, then he gets the call. The Marine only has to say;
Sir, I thought he was moving his hand towards a hidden weapon or rolling off an unpinned grenade or about to press a detonator or…..you get the message
and the investigating officer must clear him. If the Marine’s perception of the circumstances was that he and his mates were under threat then he did what he was trained to do. If, on the other hand, he went into the room, was satisfied that all inside were not a threat and then he killed one then that is murder. That moment in battle when the ‘heat of battle’ has cooled is a very fine line that can’t be discerned by cameras or words. Initially it is a slow down of nerves, breathing, pulse and reactions – a sense of having survived and then quickly becomes a state of affairs when the tactics change to securing the scene and the prisoners. Good commanders pick it quickly and true, some soldiers have to be told it is now over, but before you condemn anyone slow to change, measure the adrenalin in his blood and the fear in his heart and then comment. If you can’t do either then leave it be. In the long term I expect the matter will die. Sane and experienced men will know these things and feel all I have said. Thankfully, the commentators aren’t the judges as well.
War on Terror

Kirby thinks he is running the country

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I missed it but apparently Justice Kirby ran for Parliament in the last elections and has been elected President. Either that or he has forgotten his role in society. I would have thought he was required to uphold the laws of the land and, when required, to test them. I can’t see how he can do this if he starts with a stated bias. In New Zealand he is quoted as saying he is prepared to curb Howard. I presume that means he now has a proven conflict of interest and must remove himself from adjudicating on all matters that come before the court that pertain to anything that hints of Conservatism.
HIGH Court judge Michael Kirby signaled last night that he was prepared to rein in the Howard Government’s enhanced mandate, saying the rights of minorities were at risk of being abused.
How long before Kirby’s seventieth birthday or can Howard just sack him when he has control of both houses Must be tempting. On the other hand it might be wise to leave him there so people have regular reminders of what might happen if they loose concentration and vote a Left Wing government into office. Nah. Sack the bastard.
Politics

The ALP Miss the point

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Latham has every answer but the right ones. With Carmen of Amnesia sitting in the chair it was bound to happen. Scoresby freeway controversy…Sydney’s Orange Grove development…Tasmanian Government helped derail his forestry plan…we were a bit too principled…problems within his office. Carmen, with brilliant left wing rationale, suggests the answer is in contracts. Simply force all aspiring Labour politicians to sign a pledge to work their electorates by phone, cold calling, mail-outs and all will be solved. Carmen, one of the ALP’s problems is that you really think this is an answer.
As Labor’s national executive placed candidates on notice that they will have to perform or else, Mr Latham led a detailed discussion on the reasons behind the party’s lowest primary vote for more than 70 years
Mark, it’s no good telling candidates to perform or else. What you need are candidates who perform without being told. Once you say anything that ends with …or else you have lost the game plan. You are not leading. Candidates who understand what small business people go through in their day-to-day grind are sourced from the small business world. Not from Universities, Union rolls, Education departments or Law Offices. Barry Cohen touches on the subject in today?s Australian
A caucus made up of lawyers, teachers, public servants, former ministerial staffers, party officers and trade union officials who have rarely worked in the trade they represent is unlikely to understand or empathize with those who have invested their life savings, mortgaged their homes and worked six days a week to own their own business.
Another article underlines an allied problem. Militant unions need controlling
WHEN BlueScope Steel caught one of its train drivers doing chin-ups on the outside of a moving freight train it sacked him. The result? A stopwork meeting at its Port Kembla steelworks and more than $500,000 of molten iron poured on to the ground.
If you don’t see anything wrong with that statement then go talk to the ALP. You’re a monty to get pre-selection.
BlueScope chief executive Kirby Adams said yesterday the stopwork over the train driver was but one of 110 industrial disputes, which had cost the steel-maker 40,000 working hours in the past financial year
Barry Jones, the incoming ALP President is on record as saying the Party needs to turn more to the Left. If there is one apparent fact that came out of the last election it is that the opposite is true. Australia is a Centrist-right country and no amount of wailing over latte will ever change that. Throw the Left a bone occasionally but Labour will never get the keys to the treasury while they pander to the Left’s incessant caterwauling about their answer to a better world. Their world is humane and caring but has no road maps to get there and no hard economics to finance it.
Politics

Michael’s long walk

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Michael Long, AFL star and aborigine is planning a walk from Melbouren to Canberra to talk to John Howard. Could I suggest an alternative. Fly to Darwin, catch a bus to the Border Store on the border of NT and Arnhem Land and then walk to Oenpilli. Tell the people there to stop trashing their houses and start sending their kids to school. Everyday. Fridays Australian carried an article Third World housing shames nation. The author, Ashleigh Wilson may be shamed but I’m not. I’m angry. Every society has people who live in squallor. It generally comes about due to a lack of education, heredity issues and some substance abuse. You can’t always blame the government, (even if it is a conservative one) as no matter how much help you give some people they will maintain their position at the bottom. There are pockets of similar disfunctional living in white societies and I don’t feel ashamed about them either. Just happens. What is needed is an attitude change with these people and that stems from education. We also need an attitude change in the media and amongst sports and academic elite where people like Ashleigh and Michael Long are long on ‘Poor fellow me’ and short on solutions. Ashleigh – try doing a piece titled Solutions to an old problem Michael – Your’e a hero to a lot of aborigine youth. Why not try and help them get on track through sport. Sponsor a team maybe. Every time you talk to them tell them about the gift of education and the long death that substance abuse offers. According to a Northern Territory government research paper to be presented to a housing ministers meeting in Adelaide on December 3, it would cost about $2 billion nationally to meet Aboriginal housing demand, including $850 million in the Northern Territry. The paper said the areas of greatest need were in the Northern Territory, Queensland and Western Australia. The long suffering tax payer may be getting sick and tired of replacing houses but sure, give ’em some more. While we are handing over more money maybe we could talk to organizations like the Northern Land Council and ask them what are they are doing with royalties. We know they buy 100 series Toyotas, helicopters and mansions for the leaders but what about the poor ‘poison cousins’? We know that for years each family on Groote Island received a suitcase containing $35,000 cash twice a year from the Royalty bonanza. Just a thought…maybe some of that could have been used for house maintenance. You know, when the hot water service breaks down, repair it. When some cousin mixes metho and a ciggie and burns down the back porch, replace it. No. Too hard. Let’s just make the Darwin Toyota dealer a millionaire.
Uncategorized

Fallujah

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Picked up a post at The Green Side entitled ‘An Email from Dave – Nov 19, 04’ where Marine LtCol Dave Bellon emails his father about Fallujah. In his opening paras he talks of Corporal Yeager’s being Chuck Yeager’s grandson and if you haven’t heard of Yeager the elder then do yourself a favour and go read of this remarkable man It appears the gene pool held true as Dave Bellon talks of Cpl Yeager attacking the bad guys in Fallujah. This is one acorn that hasn’t fallen too far from the tree
The first is a Marine from 3/5. His name is Corporal Yeager (Chuck Yeager’s grandson). As the Marines cleared an apartment building, they got to the top floor and the point man kicked in the door. As he did so, an enemy grenade and a burst of gunfire came out. The explosion and enemy fire took off the point man’s leg. He was then immediately shot in the arm as he lay in the doorway. Corporal Yeager tossed a grenade in the room and ran into the doorway and into the enemy fire in order to pull his buddy back to cover. As he was dragging the wounded Marine to cover, his own grenade came back through the doorway. Without pausing, he reached down and threw the grenade back through the door while he heaved his buddy to safety.
With a full head of steam up he goes back in..
The grenade went off inside the room and Cpl Yeager threw another in. He immediately entered the room following the second explosion. He gunned down three enemy all within three feet of where he stood and then let fly a third grenade as he backed out of the room to complete the evacuation of the wounded Marine. You have to understand that a grenade goes off within 5 seconds of having the pin pulled. Marines usually let them “cook off” for a second or two before tossing them in. Therefore, this entire episode took place in less than 30 seconds.
More here
War on Terror

The Sheepdogs

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Picked up this poem from Kevin Sites Blog. A different approach to an old theme.
The Sheepdogs Most humans truly are like sheep Wanting nothing more than peace to keep To graze, grow fat and raise their young, Sweet taste of clover on the tongue. Their lives serene upon Life?s farm, They sense no threat nor fear no harm. On verdant meadows, they forage free With naught to fear, with naught to flee. They pay their sheepdogs little heed For there is no threat; there is no need. To the flock, sheepdog?s are mysteries, Roaming watchful round the peripheries. These fang-toothed creatures bark, they roar With the fetid reek of the carnivore, Too like the wolf of legends told, To be amongst our docile fold. Who needs sheepdogs? What good are they? They have no use, not in this day. Lock them away, out of our sight We have no need of their fierce might. But sudden in their midst a beast Has come to kill, has come to feast The wolves attack; they give no warning Upon that calm September morning They slash and kill with frenzied glee Their passive helpless enemy Who had no clue the wolves were there Far roaming from their Eastern lair. Then from the carnage, from the rout, Comes the cry, ?Turn the sheepdogs out!? Thus is our nature but too our plight To keep our dogs on leashes tight And live a life of illusive bliss Hearing not the beast, his growl, his hiss. Until he has us by the throat, We pay no heed; we take no note. Not until he strikes us at our core Will we unleash the Dogs of War Only having felt the wolf pack?s wrath Do we loose the sheepdogs on its path. And the wolves will learn what we?ve shown before; We love our sheep, we Dogs of War.
 Russ Vaughn 2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment 101st Airborne Division Vietnam 65-66 I enjoyed it and I know a lot of my readers will as well. For me it says it all.
Defence

No Armistice for the Courier Mail

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On the eleventh hour of the 11th day of the 11th month most of the civilized world commemorates the sacrifice of millions of men world-wide and hundreds of thousands of Australians who gave their all, were wounded or served in wars. Except in Brisbane. The local newspaper, the Courier Mail, clearly moved by the solemnity of the day, decided to run a negative Army piece provided by Luke McIlveen. Luke’s tone is bad enough but what was the Editor thinking when he decided to run with the story on 11 November? Did he forget what the day was all about. Did he not have a father or grand father that served and if not is he not aware that most of his readers do? The front page Armistice Day article Army racism shame by Luke McIlveen plumbs new depths in Army bashing and is clearly intrended to bring the Army, the Corps and the Battalion into public disrepute. It happened four years ago, was investigated and any action considered necessary would have been taken. The photo is damning but Luke, by his words, lumps a hundred thousand past and present infantrymen under the racist tag and does it on a day that should honour us. The emotive language underlines Luke’s bias and detracts from the point
The first inquiry in early 2003 was a whitewash that found members of the 1RAR Delta Company were not racist and only engaged in occasional “jovial banter“
and
The inquiry is likely to be run out of Canberra, making it more difficult for middle-ranking officers to protect their mates
Whitewash…middle-ranking officers protecting their mates..heavy stuff Luke. Fairly libellous statements. The great thing is of course you are not required to prove anything. You can say what you like and trust that the less than discernering readership that your bylines attract will read the article and accept it as gospel. The photographer takes up the story. He says the image was simply a joke.
“It really and truly is nothing but a storm in a tea cup,” Mr Fraley said. “I have been with the Army taking their photos since Vietnam. I have never, ever, seen any racism.” Mr Fraley said the soldiers had been competing for who could take the best “fun photo”. “That’s all it was, there was no ceremonies, and the whole thing took two to three minutes.“
Stupid, yes, ill advised yes – but I’m not sure the blatant racism is proven. Arch (and I know him) may be trying not to rock the boat but I do know he wouldn’t cop blatant racism. In an old piece titled “How I became a journalist: Luke McIlveen explains why he doesn’t concern himself with hard facts.
I’m biased though. Owing to my inability to count and distrust of anything you can’t prove in less than a minute, a career as an actuary or physicist was never really going to be an option.
Maybe some wise old hack should have told him he needed to look longer ‘than a minute’ before publishing anti-army beat ups’. Luke goes on about being a copy boy.
It was good fun though – we drank together, wrote anything to get a byline and berated conservative columnists under nom de plumes in the letters pages. At the same time I completed my unfinished Arts degree by correspondence.
Nom de plumes…wrote anything to get a byline – wow, I am impressed. Very undergrad – must have made for some great giggling over drinkies. Always the truth…always balanced…always signing your own name to letters to the editor. Honourable Luke and oh so liberal – Not like the soldiers at all. The one unguarded moment of those soldiers lives would have been well and truly balanced by months in East Timor where they risked life and limb to help the East Timorese. Tell me Luke do you have any positive articles about how these same troops, or their mates, helped the natives of Afghanistan, Iraq and a dozen other foreign countries. Have you ever submitted a positive article about the military? You have traded more than a hundred years of honour and service for 5 minutes of unguided, unwise activity. Oh, by the way, correct terminology is Delta Company, 1RAR and it’s not a regiment, it is a battalion of a regiment. I take the care to research correct nomenclature only to find professional journalists don’t. Luke, it’s like saying Mail News Courier Paper – ask someone or can’t you even bring yourself to talk to a soldier. Update: Similarly moved friend and fellow ex 1RAR officer Kel puts pen to paper to the editor and includes it in comments. Update II: The Road to Surfdom has an article covering this same point. Of course, Tim’s perspective is different from mine but the comment thread has some good thoughts.
Defence
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